


Step Four: Dealing With The Baggage

by pinkpop



Series: A Guide to Honeytrapping: The Art of Screwing the Bad Guy [4]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Again, F/M, jack done an oops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:41:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27088042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkpop/pseuds/pinkpop
Summary: Nisha has some yikes-worthy words with Jack and Reader, while Jack makes Reader an offer that they'd be dumb as all hell to refuse.
Relationships: Handsome Jack (Borderlands)/Reader
Series: A Guide to Honeytrapping: The Art of Screwing the Bad Guy [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1796794
Kudos: 29





	Step Four: Dealing With The Baggage

“I thought you had business in Lynchwood,” Jack says, folding his arms across his chest like a grumpy teenager.  
He’s got no real reason to be angry with Nisha; not as far as you can tell. He's the one who's been cheating on her. If you ask me, it's more like he’s projecting. He’s probably feeling an awful lot like a child who got caught sticking his fingers in the pie, so to speak, and the only thing that staves off the heat in a person’s cheeks when they’re caught doing something bad is to get mad at the person who had the nerve to catch them.  
“Business is done,” Nisha says, entering the apartment and turning the air around her chilly.  
She has such a presence. Even when she doesn’t mean to intimidate, she still succeeds in it. Her boots clink like an old cowboy as she crosses the marble floor of the apartment slowly, each step deliberate and thoroughly bloody menacing. She pinches the brim of her hat as she walks and removes it, placing it carefully on the back of the armchair that she’s stood next to. Jack closes the door behind her; he knows it’s probably best that nobody in the corridor hears what’s coming next.  
Nisha tilts her head up, giving you a full view of her face for the first time. She’s pretty - real pretty. I mean, she’s not Vogue pretty, but she’s Pandoran Bandit Turned Interplanetary Dictator pretty, which is enough, I guess. Her skin is smooth and unmarred and her lips are stained a purple colour that matches her coat. It doesn’t escape you that everything this woman wears is the colour of Eridium, however. Nor that her main job for Jack is mining the stuff from her town. You suppose this relationship might be more about convenience, these days, than it is about love. At least for Jack.  
“You didn’t answer my question,” Nisha says, looking at you with the angriest eyes you’ve ever seen. They've got that lowkey _I-will-cut-you_ look to them.  
“Leave it, Nish,” Jack sighs from behind her, almost as if he’s been in this situation before. She strikes you as a cat-like woman; playing with her victims for as long as she can before she finishes them off. And it seems like Jack is almost tired of it. Like every pet he’s had has suffered this fate and he’s getting bored of digging graves for them. But neither of them know much about what you’ve been through. You’re Pandoran, after all. You can give as good as you get and you sure as hell aren’t any kind of fieldmouse.  
“I didn’t think it warranted an answer,” you tell her, leaning back against the back of the sofa and being sure to keep your body language open. Shoulders back, chin up, chest open. “It seemed more like a rhetorical question to me. But then I’ve never been very good at reading people who mumble their words.”  
Brave. You are very brave.  
Nisha smirks. “It wasn’t rhetorical, sweetheart.”  
“Okay. For fun,” you state.  
“I’m sorry?” Nisha asks, quirking an eyebrow. Her anger boils over a little and she lifts the blade from its sheath at her thigh. Jack rolls his eyes like she’s Making A Scene in public again. And when Handsome Jack thinks you’re causing too much of a scene, you probably have a few issues to iron out. Then again, with all that cash she’s rolling in from Jack’s back pocket, it’s not like she hasn’t had ample opportunity to get a therapist.  
“I’m screwing your boyfriend for fun,” you elaborate.  
I take it back. Stupid. You are very stupid.  
Jack moves into the kitchen and pulls out yet another bottle of champagne from his seemingly bottomless refrigerator. Nisha doesn’t flinch when the cork pops and neither do you. You’re both too busy staring each other down - she with a nasty look in her eyes that says she’s about to rip you limb from limb with her teeth, and you with a cheeky smirk that says you don’t really care if she tries to do that. Jack, however, is back to wearing his happy-go-lucky facade, wandering around the kitchen with an open bottle of champagne and the steak knife he used to open it. He's humming a show tune. The confidence is back. He’s tired of Nisha putting a dampener on his afternoon and he’s going to do everything in his power not to let her ruin it any further.  
“You want some champagne?” he asks Nisha, but she doesn’t take her eyes off you for a second.  
“You should probably answer him, doll,” you tell her. “He could have you killed, after all.”  
For the first time in a solid 3 minutes, she blinks and looks away from you. She’s still got a face like a crack of thunder, but at least her gaze is aimed at Jack for a while, which gives you the chance to ease back onto the sofa and pretend that you are way more comfortable with all this than you actually are.  
“I don’t want your fancy booze,” she tells him, voice raised a fraction. “I want you to stop screwing with floozies behind my back like you’re a damn teenager.”  
Oh boy, here we go.  
“Too bad,” Jack says, cheerily. “I screw whoever I want, whenever I want, however I want. My castle, my rules.” He pours the champagne into three gold-rimmed flutes and then turns back to the fridge, sneakily swigging straight the bottle while his back is turned before putting it back on ice. Don’t blame him, really. This is gonna be a rough one and if I was gonna spend the next however many many minutes getting in between my murderous girlfriend and my firecracker side piece, I’d definitely prefer to be doing it drunk.  
“So much for me being queen, huh,” Nisha spits. “All that talk about a partnership - about us ruling the world together. Ha, gimme a break."  
"I'm just being myself, baby," Jack grins. There's a bite to his words when he next speaks. "You don't want me to go back to taking orders from assholes, right, Nish?"  
There's definitely some history there, alright, but hell if you're brave enough to start prodding at that volcano.  
Nisha snickers. "Well, I guess you always did get bored of people quickly.”  
Jack gestures with his fresh champagne flute. “A king can have more than one queen, can’t he? Ugh, you suck the fun outta everything. You _used_ to be exciting.”  
"I used to be all you had," Nisha mumbles. "Other than that daughter of y-"  
The champagne flute is pointed so sharply at her that bubbly sloshes out of it onto the counter between them. "Don't," Jack warns, voice low and not at all friendly. You get the feeling that you shouldn't have heard that.  
“Who gave you the impression that you were queen material anyway?” you mutter. “You strike me as more of a scullery maid. Rough hands and low IQ count.”  
Nisha whirls around, pointing her knife in one hand. She spits the words so violently that they sound almost painful. “And who the hell asked you, you little bitch?”  
"Nisha, quit it!" Jack snaps, slamming the flute onto the counter, though not quite hard enough to smash it.  
“Don’t worry,” you tell him, raising a hand to silence him. He doesn’t react well to being shushed, but you’re too engrossed in your spat with his girlfriend to care much about him getting his knickers in a twist. “I can handle myself, thank you very much. I never needed a rich man to fight my battles for me before and I sure as hell don’t need one now, either.”  
Nisha chuckles and turns to Jack, her shoulders relaxing a little as she deflates. “I can see why you picked this one,” she tells him, rolling her eyes. “You like ‘em with a sharp tongue.”  
“I have a pretty sharp switchblade to match if you really wanna settle this the messy way.”  
Nisha shakes her head and laughs, but it’s not the amused kind. It’s more of a tired laugh, like she’s been living with Jack’s affinity for extracurricular activities for one too many years. It's not her fault, really - you can’t help who you fall in love with and you certainly can’t help who they fall into bed with. It’s just rotten luck, is all. And you can’t blame her for being angry or hurt.  
She sheaths her hunting knife and heads for her abandoned hat that sits perched on the back of the armchair still. Picking it up and placing it on her head, she doesn’t even turn around when she speaks to you next. “Nah, you keep him,” she says. “For now, at least. He’ll get bored of you eventually and when he does, he’ll come running back to me.” She moves for the door, pulls it open and steps out into the corridor. “He always does.”  
Nisha closes the door behind her and the apartment is silent as the grave for the next 5 minutes, giving you and Jack a little time to think about how close you both just came to being buried in a shallow one. Jack rests both palms against the smooth marble surface, hanging his head and huffing a great sigh of what might be relief or frustration - maybe both. He's definitely getting gutted in his sleep tonight.  
“Well that was the single most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever witnessed,” you state.  
“You’ve obviously never seen her when she’s pissed,” Jack scoffs. "She was just warming up. Women, right?"  
You recoil at the thought. “You mean that wasn’t her being pissed?” You fold your arms across your chest and shiver slightly. “Yikes.”  
You can see the annoyance on Jack’s face, even though he’s now covering most of it with his palms. His eyebrows are drawn a little sharper than usual and his lips are pressed tightly together as if he’s feeling some kind of physical pain that he can’t quite hide. But since Nisha didn’t touch him in the several minutes she spent threatening to cut a bitch up, you assume it’s all stress-related. Either way, you can see the cracks splintering bit by bit and you can’t help but feel sorry for him. He’s an asshole, but even he’s suffering because of his own actions and you get the sense that he just can’t help it; that he can’t switch off his self-destruct mode. And what kind of slightly damaged women would you be if you weren't at least a little bit attracted to the idea of fixing a broken man, right?  
“Are you okay?” you ask quietly.  
He grunts, sighs again, rubs his eyes until he’s almost blind. “Yeah,” he answers, standing up straight and looking around the kitchen like he’s looking for his next task. “Someone’s gonna have to help me finish these glasses of champagne though ‘cause this bottle cost me a date with a less-than-pretty wine collector’s daughter and if I had to play tonsil tennis with a buck-toothed brat in order to get my hands on this stuff then you bet your pretty little ass that I’m not gonna waste a single drop of it.”  
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” you frown.  
Jack meets your gaze with a look of slight puzzlement. “I definitely do,” he says. “Like I said, this bottle cost me -”  
You roll your eyes and get up from your seat. “No, you idiot; I mean you don’t have to do _that_. Playing it up, putting on a show. You make such a big deal of everything, making everyone think your life is one chaotic mess of partying and money and high-rolling rich guys asking you to sleep with their daughters.”  
“I didn’t sleep with her, we just french kissed," Jack whispers. "I have standards."  
You move towards the kitchen, standing on the other side of the counter and looking at him with a soft kind of look. You sigh, tilt your head at him. “You’re scared of being forgettable,” you tell him.  
Step Four: dealing with the baggage.  
“I’m not scared of anything,” he laments, "and I’m definitely not forgettable.” He looks at you with sad eyes, though he hides it pretty well, and that voice inside your head - the Crimson Raider that lives inside your brain - tells you not to fall for it.  
_He’s bad_ , it says. _He deserves everything he gets_.  
This is the man who's destroying your home. The man who would happily destroy you along with it. He has tortured and killed and lied and manipulated. He’s wrong on almost every level there is and you know it. Hell, you think even he knows it, somewhere deep down inside. But he’s so… tired. He’s manning several stations at once; keeping Hyperion from crumbling from the inside out; travelling between Pandora, Helios, and Elpis at the whim of whoever needs to speak to him; managing resources to carry him and his forces through the war. And now his stabby-looking girlfriend will probably attempt to kill him over supper tonight.  
And in the background there are his own insecurities, always trying to take him down. No matter how hard he tries, no matter how drunk or arrogant or eccentric he acts, they’re still there when he closes his eyes.  
How could you possibly look at him and not feel sorry? For the first time ever, you think you can see a real person in there. He looks unhappy, uncertain.  
He looks _old_.  
“I think you are,” you say. “Scared, I mean.” Jack looks up from the champagne flute and looks you in the eye. “I think you’re living life under the notion that people are best kept at a distance,” you add. “That it's better to have people watching you from the audience than to have them on stage with you. You want people to think you’re untouchable and god-like and that they could only ever dream of being anywhere near you. But that way of living is bullshit,” you state. “And I think you’re lonely.”  
Jack blinks at you and swallows. The clanging of construction work outside is the only thing you can hear beyond these four walls and inside the apartment, there’s just silence. The tick tick ticking of the clock barely registers and when Jack speaks, even his voice is quiet.  
“I think you’re too smart for this planet,” he says.  
You smile. “And yet here I am.”  
“You know there’s not a single person in all six galaxies that would ever speak to me like you just did, right?" he asks. "I mean, you’d have to be pretty stupid to call me out on my crap like that.”  
You shrug your shoulders and offer a syrupy sweet grin. “What can I say, for someone so clever, I tend to be awfully dumb.”  
Jack chuckles and pushes a champagne flute across the marble countertop towards you. “Help me finish this before we head out,” he says, sipping from one of the other glasses.  
“Where are we going?”  
“You’ll see.” He looks at you over the rim of his glass as he sips. Swallowing the fizzy white liquid down, he swipes a thumb over the gold rim of the flute. “I have a proposition for you.”

\-----------------------

The office is around the size of your first apartment back when you were a student. It’s decked out with all of the necessary mod-cons; multiple computer terminals, a desk that rivals the size of a king-size bed, and a cushy looking desk chair with a big red button embedded in the arm of it. Coffee machine in the corner and a sofa that looks like it might also be a bed in disguise. Actually, now that I think about who owns the company, that is _definitely_ a bed in disguise. And it probably has enough DNA on it to clone him with.  
“So, what do you think?” Jack asks, standing behind you in the centre of the floor space with both hands on each of your shoulders.  
“What do I think about what?” you ask him, slightly confused.  
“About this office being yours?”  
You turn around in the circle of his arms to face him. He’s grinning a wide, proud grin, seemingly expecting you to throw your arms around his neck and thank him for gracing you with such an opportunity. Although that’s exactly what it is: an opportunity. All the things you could do if you worked here; and I don't just mean the sexy stuff.  
“Work for you?” you ask him.  
“You’ll be in charge of all of my assets,” he says. “Or at least some of ‘em. I dunno, I own a lot of stuff, it’s hard to keep track. Point is, you’ll be here with me for like 5 hours a day and I’ll be paying you for the privilege.”  
You raise an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? How much?”  
“Pfft, like that matters. What matters is that we’ll be able to have super kinky office sex whenever we like. There's even a bed in the corner so we can get our freak on in comfort.”  
_Called it._  
You smile up at him. “You make a very good pitch,” you purr.  
“So you’ll do it?”  
You pull away from him and wander the office, running your fingertips across glossy surfaces and over the soft upholstered chair behind the desk. You take a seat in it, squishy and thick and positively expensive. Jack joins you, perching on the edge of the desk next to you and smiling as though you’ve already agreed to his deal. He thinks he has you in the bag already. How adorable.  
“You didn’t answer my question,” you grin, swivelling back and forth in the chair. It's the natural thing to do when faced with a chair that swivels. It's human instinct.  
“The one about the paycheck?”  
“You betcha, big boy. If I’m gonna work for a dictator, then I’m gonna have to be getting paid a lot for it. Especially if I’m letting him screw me on his lunch break.”  
“ _Letting_ him screw you?” Jack scoffs. “Oh, that’s how it is, huh? Cute. Okay, if you want the deal sweetened, then I’ll pay you as much as you damn well like until the end of time. I have more than enough money to spare.”  
“You'd pay that much for little old me?"  
"With legs like that? In a tiny Hyperion pencil skirt? I'd pay ten times the highest number you can count to, babe."  
"Sounds good to me. I’ll have to let my boss know first though. I live in his apartment, so I gotta make sure he won’t harbour any hard feelings about me quitting.”  
Hard feelings are the least Roland will have when he hears about this. Good luck selling this idea to the Raiders. Yeesh.  
“I can give you somewhere to live,” Jack says coolly, shrugging one shoulder like it’s no big deal.  
“Are you asking me to move in with you?” you tease.  
“Are you tryna tell me you wouldn’t jump at the chance to live with me?”  
It seems Jack gives as good as he gets. Good for him.  
“Let’s see how the job goes first, shall we?” You do a full turn in the chair until Jack puts his foot out to catch you and stop you from making another rotation. There’s a brief moment where the room is silent and you forget that you’re not supposed to be enjoying yourself here. You’re not supposed to be having fun in a Hyperion issued office chair and sharing flirtatious banter with the man you’re supposed to be screwing over.  
Your time spent with Jack is beginning to feel a little too normal. But you’re hard pressed to care. He’s just so… attractive. You can barely concentrate on breathing when you’re with him, let alone form rational thought on notions like allegiance and moral duty.  
“One more thing,” Jack says, leaning back and watching you with a smug look on his face. “Press the button on the arm of the chair real quick.”  
You do as you’re told and push the button with a soft click. And just like that, the chair begins to vibrate in _exactly_ the right place. Eyes wide, you raise a hand to your mouth, desperately trying not to blush.  
“You’re incredibly bad behaved, you know that?” you ask him through a gasp.  
He watches you squirm in your seat as it buzzes and buzzes underneath you. “All the fun people are," he grins. "I’ll give you the night to think about my offer. But something tells me it’s not gonna take you that long to decide.”

\----------------------

“It’s the perfect opportunity!” you argue.  
Mordecai shakes his head, his refusal evident in the disgusted curl of his mouth. “Not in a million years. It’s one thing screwing the guy, but working for him? Nah. No. It’s done.”  
Crimson HQ is filled with all the necessary people, every one of them arguing for a different corner. Lilith is considering the offer, Mordecai is horrified by it. Roland and the Vault Hunter are contemplating whether or not you’re disposable enough to send on a kamikaze mission to take down Jack, and Brick has only just twigged that you’ve had actual real-life sex with Handsome Jack and looks like he might be having a moment of crisis at the thought of it. Even Moxxi is here, passing watered-down beer around the group in an effort to either hinder the brewing fight or get everyone drunk enough to stir it up even more. Honestly, who knows.  
One thing you do know is that Mordecai has a point - having one of their own setting up shop on enemy territory is an unsavoury thought. Lilith likes to know how far all of their manpower is spread and what exactly they’re doing at all times, which is hard enough as it is when Raiders are wandering off into the Wastes for a quick tinkle, but with you working for Jack at Hyperion it’ll be ten times harder to keep an eye on you.  
Still, you can’t ignore how handy it would be to have unbridled knowledge of at least a portion of Jack’s ventures. You could get all up in his business without having to bend over backwards to come up with an excuse. Or having to bend over in general - which, sure, you happen to enjoy being railed by the richest, kinkiest guy in the galaxy. But it’d be nice to be able to ask him a simple question about Hyperion’s war effort without having to shave the entire lower portion of your body first, if you catch my drift. To be honest, Jack is probably just looking for another trusted associate to do things for him. A pretty little business partner who’s deep enough in his pocket to do what he needs them to do without asking questions. He’ll be hunting for another useful asset in preparation for Nisha’s ever-nearing departure and you suppose you’re next in line for the role given how much time you’ve spent filling Nisha’s shoes in _other_ areas.  
“Look, I’m not gonna be killing people and I’m not gonna have any part in anything hinky,” you argue, watching Mordecai shake his head like he’s already vetoed the idea. “I’m just gonna be managing resources for him so that he can get some extra shuteye or get laid on his space yacht from time to time. If I take this job, then I’ll be able to see where everything is stored and sent to - I’ll control a hefty sized portion of all of the shit Hyperion ships out to the front lines and has stored in caches - including those codes to the experimental weapons.”  
Lilith perks up at the mention of the elusive experimental weapons. She glances sidelong at Roland, chews her lips, and you decide she’s definitely gonna be the easiest one to get through to. Turning your attention to her, you hammer home your argument. “I’ll be able to dig through all the shit the Jack has on file and find the codes for that armoury. It’ll take some time, sure, so I’ll have to blag it for a while before I can get a hold of them, but once I do, we’ll be home free. We’ll have those weapons and we can… we can kill Jack.”  
A falter in your voice as you say the words. Is that really what you want?  
Lilith looks to Roland and Roland mulls it over. The two seem like they’re talking it out in silence for a while, like they’re having a full conversation inside their heads. Actually, maybe they are. That is a thing sirens can do, after all. A creepy, intimidating, I-hope-they-can’t-see-all-of-the-porn-inside-my-head thing.  
“You think he could be onto you?” Roland asks you.  
You straighten and give him a shrug. “If he is then he’s very good at hiding it. The poor guy hasn’t done anything but give me heart eyes since we met. I suppose we’ll find out, right?”  
“When he stabs you in the throat and storms Sanctuary with an army of Loaders,” Mordecai says.  
“Best be on guard, then,” you offer.  
Lilith looks to Roland once more and you silently take a bottle of beer from Moxxi and nod your thanks. Lilith shrugs and bows out of the conversation, heading out onto the balcony that overlooks the wartorn refugee city.  
A sigh leaves Roland’s chest and he gives a firm nod in your direction. “Fine, tell him you’ll do it. But if this goes south, I need you up and out of there as fast as you can. And if you can’t get out, then I need you dead. I’m sorry soldier, but it’s better for you to take the easy way out than be tortured for information.”  
The room is silent, all of you more than a little alarmed at the implications of that sentence. Not that it was at all subtle.  
“You’re a real party starter, huh?” you say. “I don’t really have much to tell him.”  
“He’ll find something; trust me,” Roland frowns, a dead serious look on his face - not that he ever looks any different. “And if he doesn’t, then he’ll still torture you, just for fun. And you don’t wanna live through that, soldier.”  
With a final glance around the room at the unsettled faces of everyone around you, Roland turns and begins rifling through papers on the desk as if he hadn’t just told you to off yourself in front of everybody. Slowly but surely, everyone follows suit, trickling off one by one into their own mundane tasks.  
You leave the room behind Moxxi - it’s her best angle - and think about calling Jack to let him now you’re taking his offer. You wonder if he’ll smile excitedly or if he’ll keep his cool and show you to your new office. Maybe he’ll pin you against your new desk and break you in. It’s only when Moxxi stops you at the bottom of the stairs that you realise you’re grinning like a fool.  
“You gotta keep your feet on the ground, sugar,” Moxxi says, halting you with one hand to your shoulder. “I see where this is headed and I know exactly where it ends. That smile, the late night calls, the early morning meetups.”  
You look at her, confused, though it doesn’t take much of a rocket scientist to figure out what she’s implying and you cotton on quick. Your stomach sinks and the blood rushes up your neck and into your cheeks. Shifting your weight to throw off the discomfort, you shake your head and laugh awkwardly. “What’re you saying, Mox?”  
“I’m saying you can’t let this job get to you. Jack is the target, not the goal. There isn’t anything real between you and him, sugar, and you don’t get a happily ever after with him once this is finished. After it’s done, he’ll be dead and you have to find a way to live with that.” She places a dainty hand on your shoulder. “So for your own sake, let this go.”  
You shrug her hand away from your shoulder and straighten your back a little. “I don’t have anything to let go of,” you tell her. “I know what I’m doing - there’s a reason you all chose me to do it. If you think I’m losing sight of what’s at stake, then you’re the one who’s lost it, not me. It’s just a con.”  
Moxxi smiles, but it doesn’t do much to hide her worry. With a small nod, she turns on her heels and slopes out through the doorway, leaving you in the silence of Tannis’ lab.


End file.
